We are delighted to feature Dr Sheree Trotter as our next speaker, on Sunday 18 August online at 8pm. Sheree will be well known to many. She shows extraordinary allyship, commitment and vision in supporting, advocating for, and educating about Jewish people and Israel. While not Jewish herself, she is an integral and much loved and valued part of our community along with her husband Perry.
Sheree and Perry are the founders and creators of Shadows of Shoah, as it was originally known, a multimedia educational project and exhibition about the Holocaust, which collated testimony of survivors and presented them in a unique, artistic and very moving way, and featured prominently in annual UN Holocaust Remembrance Day commemorations in New Zealand. Shadows of Shoah is now known as the Holocaust and Antisemitism Foundation.
As a Māori woman, Sheree (Te Arawa) has a unique perspective on the connections and similarities between Māori and Jewish people and has worked tirelessly to build an alliance between Māori and Jewish people and to counter the narrative that Jews are white colonisers in Israel. As a part of this focus, she co-founded The Indigenous Coalition for Israel and built relationships with other like-minded indigenous peoples, culminating in the recent establishment of the Indigenous Embassy Jerusalem.
Sheree is also a trustee of and historian for Jewish Lives, an online museum that collects and tells the stories of the Jewish community in New Zealand (and also holds substantial physical archives and artefacts).
Somehow, while doing all this, Sheree completed her PhD in History at the University of Auckland, with her thesis being on Zionism in New Zealand.
We look forward to a wide-ranging discussion with Sheree about all these topics and more. Please click here, follow the link below or scan the QR code in the attached flyer to register for this talk.
